


Scorpio

by epistolic



Category: Skyfall (2012) - Fandom
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-12-16
Updated: 2012-12-16
Packaged: 2017-11-21 06:40:11
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,352
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/594631
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epistolic/pseuds/epistolic
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The problem is that Bond has learned to trust nobody except for himself. Not even Q.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Scorpio

**Author's Note:**

  * For [atavistique (Rivers)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Rivers/gifts).
  * Translation into Deutsch available: [Skorpion](https://archiveofourown.org/works/655853) by [eurydike](https://archiveofourown.org/users/eurydike/pseuds/eurydike)



> Birthday fic for darling Yvonne! I know you originally wanted a Henry/Cromwell, but I figured since you're crazy for 00Q now, this should hopefully not go amiss either. I do hope you enjoy it, bb! ♥
> 
> **[Also available in[Chinese](http://blog.sina.com.cn/s/blog_7a6e8cb701018zs3.html), translated by the talented Simona!]**

The first time Q realises there might be a problem is on a Friday night.

He wakes up in his apartment. The bed beside him is still warm. The lights are all off but a thin ray of London moonlight, cold and shivering, falls across the floor like a shard of glass. 

Bond is nowhere to be seen.

Q sits up in bed and pushes the sheets aside. His first thoughts are the thoughts of nightmares – ghosts and gunshots, blood inching across his kitchen floor, the silent whisper of a knife through the dark. To him these are familiar possibilities. They come with the territory of sleeping with a double-o: old data, a code he’s already solved, decrypted, memorised. He finds his glasses in the dark and slides them on.

He is halfway to the kitchen when someone grabs his arm and spins him into the nearest wall.

It’s Bond. For a moment they are stuck there: the curtains rustling faintly, Bond’s grip taut and unrelenting on Q’s upper arm. If Bond puts any more force into it something is going to break. 

Q goes entirely still. 

“It’s me,” Q says, finally. “It’s Q. You can let go now.”

Bond does. A slash of light from the window falls across Bond’s face and turns it shockingly white. 

“Thought you were asleep,” Bond says.

“I was. But you weren’t. I got up to look for you.”

A near-fracture is not something Bond apologises for. Q follows him into the kitchen, watches from the doorway as Bond sits himself back down at the dining table.

“What were you doing?” Q says, but then he catches sight of the empty glass and winces. “Oh.”

Bond doesn’t look at him. “You should go back to bed.”

“I’m not leaving you here to drink my entire liquor collection unsupervised.”

When Bond doesn’t answer, Q pulls out a second chair, a tad tentatively. Even after a month or so Q still can’t find it in himself to relax. He can never tell where he is with Bond.

“You don’t have to keep on doing this,” Q says at last. “I’m not going to stab you to death in your sleep. I’m not stupid enough to try. You could probably snap my wrist with two fingers. With one finger, even.”

Bond traces a single fingernail around the rim of the glass.

“But if it’s still a problem, I can have the couch made up,” Q says.

Bond says nothing.

Normally, when a person doesn’t speak, Q finds it soothing. It allows him to think about other things. The week-old cottage cheese in his fridge that he should probably throw out. The creaky hot water system. But this is James Bond, and his silences are never silent – they are always full, stifled even, and they make you feel helpless. In some wordless way, they make you feel ashamed of who you are; of all the things you’ve done; of all the things you are still unable to do.

Q goes back to bed.

\--

It wasn’t instant. There was no sudden spark, no abrupt chemistry that drew the two of them together.

Q is many things, but he is not an idiot. Before anything could happen he’d sat down and balanced the accounts: this is a good idea, this is not a good idea. 

This is what they keep Q for, after all – to take a careful step back and analyse.

There’s no glossing over what James Bond does for a living. You can’t ignore it; and after one notable episode in which Bond ends up in Intensive Care for over four weeks, Q decides that you can’t romanticise it, either. Queen and country – that’s a load of bollocks. What it comes down to is one man against another, knuckles and broken bones and gravel, and a whole lot of shooting. Q is so high up, so completely removed, that this only ever comes to him as two pulsing red dots on a computer screen; and after a while, one of the pulsing dots usually disappears. Usually the one that isn’t labelled BOND.

So Q knows who James Bond is. James Bond is a programmed killer. James Bond is dangerous at best, unstable at worst. James Bond will reliably do what you tell him not to do, and he will be reliably where you tell him not to be; but he brings back results.

James Bond is the best there is.

He is the kind of person to steer clear of, if you want to live into your thirties. Or, in Q’s case, into your mid-twenties. The one thing that Q trusts is data and the data in this case all points one way:

Nobody has ever survived an entanglement with James Bond.

Nobody.

Q knows all of this. Q is not an idiot. Nobody knows numbers better than Q.

But still, for some reason, Q doesn’t leave; he stays.

\--

“There’s no scotch in the cupboard,” Bond says.

Q looks up. It’s a Sunday. It takes him a small measure of time to untangle himself from the code still running through his head. He remembers that he’s left something in the oven again. Shit.

“That’s because I threw it out,” he says, and puts the laptop on the carpet before getting up. “I threw out the wine as well. Even the rubbing alcohol. Now excuse me a moment, I have to stop my apartment from burning down.”

Bond trails after him, eyes carefully neutral. “Why?”

“Because this is the only apartment I’ve got.”

“No, not that. You know what I’m talking about.”

Q turns his oven off. He’s not yet brave enough to peer inside at the cremated remains of his chocolate cheesecake experiment, but not doing so would mean having to talk. He hovers by the microwave, reluctant.

“You do realise,” Bond says after a while, “that I can just go out and buy some myself.”

“You do realise that I can stop anybody selling you any,” Q counters, “within a fifty mile radius of here. My laptop can be very versatile.”

They stare at each other across the kitchen bench.

“Are we having this conversation today or not,” Q says at last. “Because if not, then I have an oven to scrub and a multinational terrorist organisation to hack.”

Bond goes out so quietly that Q doesn’t even hear the front door close.

\--

“Passport,” Q says. He slides it across the countertop. “I’m afraid the photo isn’t very flattering. But then it wouldn’t be properly authentic if it was. Reference letters from the top three corporations in engineering, to get you in if you need to get in.”

Bond’s fingers brush his, briefly, as the envelope is handed over. “Plane ticket?”

“Coach. We’re on a budget.”

This is the first time they’ve seen each other in two weeks. Where Bond has been during that time, Q doesn’t want to know – or, rather, he does, but he’s convinced himself that he doesn’t.

“You could’ve picked a better time,” Q says, taking up the kitchen knife again.

“I was held up during the day.”

“Doing what?”

Bond’s gaze is unfaltering. You can never tell, looking into Bond’s face, if you’re being lied to. 

“Renovating,” Bond says.

“Does that mean I’ll be waking up to reports that some chemical factory has exploded in a third world country somewhere,” Q says. Behind him, the frying pan hisses and he sets the knife down again, turns to jab at the hash browns. “Are you staying for dinner? Or are we strictly on a professional footing again? Your choice.”

“I needed some time,” Bond says. “Is that really your dinner? Good God. And you say you’re an adult.”

“Adults can eat whatever they like,” Q says. “Your things are still in the bathroom. You had better do something about them, or I’ll burn them.” He tips a blackened hash brown into the trash. “You can see that I’m particularly gifted at burning things, so I’d take the threat seriously, if I were you.”

Bond disappears.

Q spends an aeon frozen by the kitchen bench, straining to hear whether Bond is rooting around in the bedroom. There are no hidden cameras, no listening devices. But that won’t ever stop Bond looking.

“Don’t worry,” Q calls after some time. “I’m not secretly uploading our sexual escapades onto the web.”

There is no reply.

Later, after Q has laid out two plates, he goes to the bathroom and then to the bedroom. A window is open, the curtains fluttering. Bond’s things are gone. But Bond himself is nowhere to be seen. 

Q goes back to the kitchen and puts one of the plates away, then turns the television on.

Every now and then Bond does this. Disconnects. Shrinks into himself. Once Q had reached across the bed while Bond was asleep and had been surprised, in a murky, half-asleep way, when his fingers met skin. He’d imagined sheets upon interlocking sheets of plate armour with all the soft spots locked away. He’d imagined the workmanship so smooth, it would feel like the scales of a snake. He hadn’t expected a pulse; had expected the machine-tick of a bomb counting down, the spark of a tripwire.

Q isn’t really qualified to work with explosives. He’s known that for a while now.

Still, he opens his laptop and brings up the tracking device he’s put into one of the buttons on Bond’s favourite jeans.

Bond’s gone back to his own apartment. 

Q watches the little red dot – _alive, alive, alive_ – until he falls asleep.

\--

“Tell me about Vesper,” Q had asked once.

He’s clever enough never to ask it again.

\--

“Q,” Moneypenny says, only half in the doorway. “Tune in to 007. He’s asking for you.”

Q stops what he’s doing – in all truth, he’s not even doing what he’s doing, just pretending to – pounces onto his keyboard. Moneypenny arches an eloquent brow at him.

“Easy, tiger,” she says. “As far as I know he isn’t dying. Yet.”

Q ignores her in favour of jamming in his earpiece. “007?”

“Q.”

Q hovers, fingers poised. He’s ready to pull up any number of useful things – maps, blueprints, cameras, hacking codes, local _polizei_ radio wavelength, computer passwords, outgoing flights, Underground timetables, weather satellites, power generators, personnel database, weapons catalogue. 

There is a reason why Q doesn’t like to fly; it has nothing to do with airsickness and everything to do with fear. He knows what a good hacker can do to an aircraft. He’s done it before.

There is absolute silence on Bond’s end.

“007,” Q finds himself saying. “Are you dead?”

Moneypenny is still staring at him. She mouths, carefully: _What does he want?_

He shrugs back.

Finally, after at least a minute, Bond says, “No.”

“A relief,” Q says. “Do you need me to do anything for you right now?”

“Just stay where you are.”

Q stays. He realises this is the state he has been in for the past few months. Paused, waiting to see what Bond wants, what he needs; what Q can do to help. Q is the very best at what he does but there are still some codes that he cannot crack, vaults that he cannot get into, armour that he cannot break. 

He stays, in that attitude of absolute readiness, for over an hour.

Eventually there is the sick sound of crunching bone and then a single, silenced gunshot.

Q waits a moment. He waits a moment more. 

Then he says, “Do you need me to call in a medical team?”

“I don’t think a medical team will be able to do much,” Bond says in a flat murmur. “He’s already dead. I’m on the way out.”

“No,” Q says. He’s frustrated; he’s more than a little bit angry. “I mean for _you_. Are _you_ hurt.”

“I’m fine,” Bond says.

Bond’s definition of _fine_ can range from a sprained wrist to a fully punctured lung. Q bites the inside of his cheek. There’s a rush of static, and then the connection’s dropped: typical. He doesn’t move from his computer – a part of him is still half hoping that the connection will pop back up, sorry, earpiece fell out of my ear, had to go dispatch a couple of thugs with machine guns, had to go rescue the Prime Minister’s daughter, that sort of thing. But a little voice inside his head says _no_. 

Moneypenny is standing two steps away. “He’s gone?”

“He’s on the way back,” Q says. “He didn’t want anything.”

Perhaps this was Bond’s message to him all along. Perhaps this is what Bond wants Q to understand: 

_I don’t need you._

\--

For two or three months, Bond goes off the radar.

Q tries not to get himself too worked up. After all, Q knows the figures. More than anybody else Bond is the type of agent to dive off the board for months at a time after a mission.

Nobody knows numbers better than Q.

When Q first got into this line of business – hacking, that is, not espionage – he knew instantly that this was the single thing he wanted to do. He could’ve been a banker or an architect, a town planner, an engineer, a concert pianist. A doctor. He could’ve been anything. But Q is the type of person to push. He isn’t satisfied until he’s peeled every layer back; until he’s turned the heart of something around and around in his fingers and looked at it under the microscope. You can tell him, this is the borderline, but he won’t listen.

Orphans make the best recruits, because they’re _hungry_. 

And Q is the best there is.

\--

“No,” Q says.

Bond looks up at him. This is – what, April? Q sets his mug down, a little harder than necessary, because Bond has a flicker of something in his eye and that flicker looks a bit too much like amusement. 

Q doesn’t often look intimidating, but when he’s extremely pissed off he can manage it.

“Where have you been,” Q says. “No. Shut up. I don’t want to talk to you. You should probably leave my room right now, or I will throw something at your head. Go away.”

Bond goes away.

Q scrambles to his feet, goes pounding after him. “Where the hell do you think you’re going?”

“Away,” Bond says, helpfully.

“This isn’t funny,” Q says.

“I’m not exactly laughing,” Bond says. “You have hot chocolate on your lip.”

That’s all the warning Q gets before Bond is kissing him: the old kiss, with just enough teeth at the edges to raise Q’s pulse. Bond’s hand is gripping the back of Q’s neck, holding him in place; Q has tangled a hand in Bond’s shirt. Then Q remembers that he’s meant to be angry and pushes firmly away.

“No,” Q says, again. “No sex until I get an explanation.”

Bond nips lightly at the side of Q’s throat. “I told you already. I needed some time.”

“That’s not good enough.”

Bond pulls back. A shutter has fallen down over his eyes and he looks alien suddenly, a being from another world. He removes his hand from Q’s neck, tucks it behind his back. “I see.”

“No, you don’t. You don’t see it at all. I know you don’t need me, I know you can get by perfectly well without my fancy guns and my directions and my voice in your ear, I _know_ that.” He taps over Bond’s sternum, hard. “But you don’t have to. I’m here to make things easier. I can unlock doors for you. If I’m feeling generous, I can even open them. You still have to be the one to step through them, but at least I can _help_ you.”

A faint smile appears at the edge of Bond’s mouth. “Q, you can’t help me. Not with this.”

“How would you know? You won’t let me try.”

“I don’t want you to try,” Bond says. “Every person who’s ever tried has ended up dead. I’m not very lucky. Believe me, Q, it’s easier like this.”

“Maybe it’s easier for you,” Q says, voice very low, “but it isn’t for me.”

“It will be. You’ll get accustomed to it.”

“No, I _won’t_.”

Bond just looks back at him, unblinking. Q wants to strangle him. Q wants to level an entire city, set fire to the moon. This is what being around James Bond does to him – all these irrational, unexplainable things that Bond makes Q want to do.

Instead he says, “I want to be able to get up in the middle of the night and take a piss without you thinking I’m about to murder you. I want you to stop checking where my hands are all the time. I want you to stop tensing every time I use a knife in the kitchen. I want to be able to see you off on a mission and know you’ll come back when it’s done. I want you to _trust_ me.”

“I can’t do that,” Bond says.

“Why not?” Q demands. “Because if you trust me I’ll die, or some nonsense? Don’t be an idiot.”

“I shouldn’t have to say it. You have all the numbers already. You should know.”

“The numbers are flexible.” Q hooks a hand into the collar of Bond’s shirt, tugs down hard enough for Bond to feel it. “We make the numbers. We can change them into whatever we want them to be.”

“I’ll get you killed.”

Q snorts. “Don’t flatter yourself. You’re not that capable.”

“Aren’t I?”

Beneath Q’s palm, Bond’s heartbeat flutters like a bird caught in a cage.

“Look, the point is, I’ve got you now,” Q says. “And I’m not bloody well going to let you go.”

\--

Bond is gone the next morning, but at least this time he’s left a note. M sits at the desk, scrubbing a hand across his mouth, annoyed and not trying very hard to disguise it. “But aren’t you looking for him?”

“Mmm, well,” Q says. 

It isn’t a yes. It isn’t a no.

Skyfall isn’t a place where Q is going to follow without an invitation.

\--

“When I was dead,” Bond says to him one night, “I held a scorpion in my hand every night for a month.”

Q is half-asleep. He’s pillowed half on Bond’s chest and half on his arm. Without his glasses the room is a hazy, grey blur, like a place painted inside his imagination. Vaguely, Q remembers that they’ve left the living room light on – they might also have smashed a couple of vases and knocked over a fan.

“Congratulations,” he says, mumbling it into Bond’s skin. He yawns. “You’re more stupid than I’d originally thought. I hadn’t thought it possible.”

Bond laughs softly. The sound vibrates up through Q’s cheek.

“Tell me about Vesper,” Q says.

“I can’t. Not yet. Ask me something else.”

“Tell me about Skyfall.”

“It’s all burned down now,” Bond says. “I only went to the chapel.”

Q waits, but there’s nothing more. He listens to the constant in and out tide of Bond’s breath. He drifts. He’s exhausted – even in MI6 there are more deadlines than Q would like on a Friday. He’s sore in several unmentionable places and for the first time in a long while, he’s completely content.

“I thought that the scorpion would kill me,” Bond says. It’s so soft that Q almost misses it.

“Maybe you weren’t meant to die,” Q says. 

“Maybe.”

“Maybe there’s a reason,” Q says, “why you’re still alive.”

Q can tell that Bond doesn’t believe it. That a part of him, the part that Q still can’t reach, believes that he’s a dead man walking; believes that he’s still living on borrowed time.

But it’s been almost six months, and Q is still here. With no intention of leaving. Sooner or later, Bond will make sense of it – of the two of them, Q is the one who is better with numbers, but a part of Q is fairly certain that even James Bond will figure it out eventually.

**Author's Note:**

> My first venture into Skyfall fandom, also er I know nothing about traditional Bond canon beyond Casino Royale, so sorry if there are inconsistencies. This is mostly just a tester fic while I try to get my bearings re: these two characters! Many more 00Q fics to come.
> 
> Any and all feedback is much appreciated! For updates on any future fics, feel free to add me on [LiveJournal](http://epistolic.livejournal.com) or [Twitter](https://twitter.com/#!/epistolic)! ♥

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] Scorpio by epistolic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/930497) by [fire_juggler](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fire_juggler/pseuds/fire_juggler)




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